kindness
A lottery-winning family fed 180 kids free lunches for 15 years
They won $54 million. The town still doesn't know their names.
An anonymous family in Saint-Michel, a French town of about 3,200 in the Charente region, won 50 million euros on the EuroMillions lottery in 2009, roughly $54 million. Their early moves were quiet ones. They donated nearly 400,000 euros to the town's "Housing for All" scheme and cleared the debt of a local nursing home. Then, starting in 2010, they began covering the local school cafeteria, about $86,000 a year, paying for free meals for around 180 students. That single donation equaled 20% of the town's entire annual budget. They have kept it up every year since. For 2026, the money is being redirected toward air conditioning and soundproofing the school building, and families will pay 1.50 euros per meal. Nobody in Saint-Michel knows who the family is. Locals have filled a guestbook at the town hall with messages anyway. "I explained to my children the beauty of your gesture," one mother wrote.